My Return to China

There is no doubt in my mind that I will return to China to live. This may evolve to being a 50/50 arrangement with my other home in Australia, but I will return! I am not a big believer in lists, as they seem to be the hackneyed territory of gurus and spotlight seekers, but here I am going to make an exception! These are the top 10 reasons that I will come     

British technical intelligence and the Soviet intermediate range ballistic missile threat, 1952–60

This article looks at the shifting intricacies of British assessments of the Soviet IRBM threat to the United Kingdom during the 1950s. Based on JIC, Cabinet and Air Ministry records of the period, as well as political memoirs, it looks at the assessments in parallel with the development of the British Blue Streak nuclear ballistic missile programme. This land‐based weapon was eventually cancelled in April 1960 on strategic not cost grounds, too early in this author's opinion.     

'Settling Accounts' Revisited: Reconciling Global Norms with Local Agency

In the mid- to late-1980s, the discourse of transitional justicewas shaped above all by the experience of countries in LatinAmerica, where military forces continued to exercise autonomouspower even after ceding formal authority to democratically electedgovernments. In this setting, while human rights professionalsagreed that fledgling democracies should undertake prosecutionsin accordance with their international legal obligations, theywere divided over the question of whether further developmentof international obligations in respect of punishment was desirable.Nor was it clear what, precisely, international law alreadyrequired. Writing in the early 1990s, the author of this essay concludedthat States parties to certain international treaties were ingeneral required to prosecute specific crimes. More generally,she argued, wholesale impunity for atrocious crimes was generallyincompatible with States’ responsibility to ensure thatindividuals subject to their power enjoyed fundamental rights.But these duties, she wrote, should not be interpreted to requireaction incompatible with a nascent democracy's political orlegal capacity. In this essay, the author describes how her views have evolvedin the past 15 years. Noting that international legal normsagainst impunity have grown increasingly strong and arguingthat this trend has itself proved a powerful antidote to impunity,the author nonetheless affirms ‘the central importanceof promoting the broad participation of victims and other citizensin the process of designing as well as implementing programmesof transitional justice’ and addresses the inherent tensionbetween these values and norms.     

Devolution: Where's the Revolution?

This study assesses the impacts and implications for U.S. citiesof the set of congressional actions, presidential orders, andjudicial decisions which, together, comprise the so-called "devolutionrevolution." Based on a survey of chief administrative officersof all cities with a population over 100, 000, the study attemptsto assess the impacts of these various devolution policies.Although for a few local officials, devolution policies areseen as being effective; for most, these policies are viewedas having had very little significant policy or programmaticconsequences. The study identifies the characteristics of thosecities where local officials believe devolution policies are,and are not, having significant impacts and conclude that themost important long-term implications of devolution policiesmay be the impacts they are having, and will continue to have,on the changing political and administrative leadership skillsrequired in the urban arena.     

Public Opinion and American Federalism: Perspectives on Taxes, Spending, and Trust--An ACIR Update

The research reported here updates for 1999 some public opiniondata previously provided by the U. S. Advisory Commission onIntergovernmental Relations. The 1999 survey results indicatea general continuation of opinion trends established by thelate 1970s to the mid-1980s. Local government is viewed as givingcitizens the most for their money, followed by state governmentand the federal government. Americans still regard the federalincome tax as the worst tax, followed by the local propertytax. Likewise, Americans express the most trust and confidencein local government and the least trust and confidence in thefederal government, although confidence in all governments increasedover comparable data for 1992. Race and party identificationand, in one case, region are significant factors differentiatingopinions about the federal, state, and local governments andtheir taxes.     

Reds Need Not Apply: Communism and the FCC, 1940-60

New communication technologies—particularly the Internet—have drastically complicated the problem of preserving privacy. As a result, a multitude of solutions for this increasingly complex area of the law have been put forth in recent years. This essay concludes, however, that changes in technology do not warrant altering the underlying constitutional balance that was arrived at decades ago in the tort law of privacy. The free speech limits on privacy law were imposed for good reason, and steps to protect the interest in the new online environment should not be ones that upset that careful balance.     

With Strings Attached: Statutory Delegations of Authority to the Executive Branch

While research on the influence of divided government upon legislative outputs is available, relatively little identifies the effects of divided government on legislative control of bureaucratic discretion. Some suggest that inter‐branch conflict between the President and Congress leads legislators to seek to retain legislative control over the bureaucracy. As a result, periods of divided government increase statutory control and reduce agency autonomy. Close examination of statutes creating each federal agency between 1946 and 1997 reveal that divided government increases specificity of statutory control. In addition, the particular type of divided government involving split partisan control between the chambers of Congress fosters greater specific statutory control when new government agencies are created.